Author Archives: Jeremy Pilaar

Why do the lawsunderlying capitalism so heavily favor the wealthy and corporations? One answer, according to my research, lies in the political economy of the legal profession. At the most elite level of the profession sits the Supreme Court bar, lawyers with enormous influence over key rules that structure market relations. In a recent piece, I trace the origins of the Supreme Court bar to better understand the Court’s rightward shift.

Though part of this is due to the appointment of increasingly pro-business justices, Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus has shown that the Supreme Court bar has also played a role. This bar consists of the attorneys admitted to argue before the justices. As Lazarus and others have revealed, a handful of these lawyers appears before the Court much more frequently than the rest. This elite group also disproportionately works on behalf of large corporations, skewing the Court’s docket in favor of business and deepening the competitive imbalance between big companies and their opponents.